STAGES & SCREENS: AN INTRODUCTION

-

Allow me to share a little bit about my engagement with culture that might help you find an interest in this blog: 

Like a lot of writers about stages and screens, I'm something of a completist. I've visited all but one of the nearly 50 Tony-winning Regional Theaters around the country, seen all of Shakespeare's plays in production on stage or screen, seen the full Century Cycle by August Wilson (and his one-man autobiographical show twice), seen and/or read almost all of the Pulitzer Prize winners in drama, seen nearly the full repertoire of operas as defined by the largest opera company in the world, the Metropolitan Opera, as well as many operas that aren't in what might be called the canon, visited almost all of the major opera houses in the United States, visited almost all of the theaters in New York City, seen much of the 2010s supply of theater on and off-Broadway, seen all of the American Film Institute's Top 100 American films, seen almost all of the Academy Awards' choices for Best Picture since 1927, and seen much of the Sight & Sound Top 250 in its various iterations over recent decades. 

Here I expect to explore the cultural detritus from all that reading, play-going, opera-going and film-going, look at some books about the arts, review some new and old operas, plays and films, assemble a little perspective over the decades that have passed in the arts and, in some respects, the decades to come. I hope you'll enjoy visiting the observations that have emerged from those labors. 

 

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

WELCOME TO THE 100TH OPERA SEASON AFTER THE ART FORM'S ALLEGED DEATH

-
A new opera season is upon us, one that in April will see the celebration of the 100 th  anniversary of what has been called “the death of opera.” On April 26, 1926, the great conductor Arturo Toscanini burst into tears upon completing the first performance of Puccini’s last opera  Turandot . Since then, though many excellent new operas have been performed, it’s been argued that popular opera has died.  The New York Times  opera critic Zachary Woolfe in 2024 went so far as to say “A century on, it can be said confidently: With Puccini died the great opera tradition. There have been extraordinary works created since his death, but next to none have penetrated the public consciousness, or the core repertoire.” The century of music past “Nessun Dorma” ( Turnadot ’s greatest aria, which itself has been played almost to death) has been diverse and exciting, and there are more new operas than ever to get excited about in the last few years, with many different styles of cl...
Read more

RANKING THE NEARLY 50 TONY-WINNING REGIONAL THEATERS

-
I have been to all but one of the regional theaters that have won the Tony award since it began awarding regional theaters annually in the 1970s. I have attempted a basically impossible task here, which is to rank all of them. It’s impossible because, first of all, all of them have won the award and are all (I can attest in all but one case) wonderful theaters. Secondly, no one can see all the shows produced by almost 50 theaters sprawled out across this giant country, so a ranking inevitably favors whatever random production one happens to see. Nonetheless, I have cobbled together a basis for ranking, a mix of personal preference (it’s just my opinion and someone else will and should have 50 very different rankings), a rating of the quality and originality of the programming over the years (with admittedly some theaters more closely followed then others over decades) and the theater buildings or settings, with special favor often granted to theaters with a unique mission unduplicated ...
Read more

FELLINI GETS ANOTHER LOOK AFTER CRITICS KNOCK HIM DOWN SEVERAL PEGS

-
This year the legendary film director Federico Fellini is getting his first box office test since his movies 8 ½ and La Dolce Vita plummeted in the famous 2022 Sight and Sound ranking of the best 250 films of all time, probably thanks to a reckoning on the treatment of women provoked by the “#MeToo” movement. A new 35mm print of 8 ½ is running all this week at Chicago’s Music Box Theatre as part of a mini-retrospective called “Five by Fellini,” on the heels of a prolonged and much-extended run for the movie at New York City’s Film Forum this Spring. The Music Box’s five Fellini films include both 8 ½ (1963) and La Dolce Vita (1960), as well as La Strada (1954), City of Women (1980) and Amarcord (1983), all five of which depict aspects of Fellini’s relationship to women. He once said that throughout his life he viewed women “from the vantage point of a pre-puberty or slightly post-puberty boy” ( The New York Times , Nov. 12, 1979). That perspective is at the heart of the films’ r...
Read more